Thread: What's with all the new people registering just to post spam?

  1. #1
    Mayor of Awesometown Govtcheez's Avatar
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    What's with all the new people registering just to post spam?

    Seriously, there've been at least 3 of these in the last week alone.

  2. #2
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    I too have noticed this. I've been following other forums for a few days now (programming or not) and it seems to be generalized. Lots of "attacks" on forums, lots of work for moderators and admins alike. Even unsuspecting places like low traffic forums seem to have had an increase in spammers for the past 3 weeks.

    The objective is the same; to try and get people to send email to some email address. If you want my opinion, there's an attempt to put some new stuff into circulation.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  3. #3
    Ethernal Noob
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    I hate the ones who pm you their assignments. I barely want to do my own class assignments, let alone yours.

  4. #4
    Mayor of Awesometown Govtcheez's Avatar
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    I mean the people Mario's talking about - the ones who are posting bogus ads and crap like that.

  5. #5
    MFC killed my cat! manutd's Avatar
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    This forum had to redo it's entire interface just because of the sheer volume of spam registrations (over 5 in ten minutes).
    Silence is better than unmeaning words.
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  6. #6
    The superhaterodyne twomers's Avatar
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    My site's getting spammed bad I don't have the time though to make a good filter :/ I had one that worked for ages, and anticipated a time when I would have to make it better (there was one loophole which was blatantly obvious and I hoped the spam bots weren't smart enough to exploit). They have evolved though, and I didn't use that time to make a better filter either/

    There are lots of accounts which have 0 posts too. They may just be a mixture of users who have had their post deleted as it was spam, or just registered for the sake of it ... anyone know how one differentiates between an active user and a non-active user?

  7. #7
    MFC killed my cat! manutd's Avatar
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    Try giving them a message after six months of not logging on. This would say log on now or your account will be deleted. If they don't assume it's spam/inactive and delete it.
    Silence is better than unmeaning words.
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  8. #8
    Insane Game Developer Nodtveidt's Avatar
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    Many of the other forums I visit are currently being targetted by spambots as well. There seems to be little in the way of remedy for it though, captchas or whatever they're calling them these days are of little use anymore it seems. I really don't understand the purpose either...I mean seriously, would the people who write these spambots like it if THEIR forums got flooded with annoying spam? It's as if people do this simply to be annoying. Well, we're annoyed now!

  9. #9
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    I didn't realize this was a new occurrence here as opposed to what's been happening here for the last few years.

    We do log IPs and email addresses here don't we? It would be so nice to um...spam the spammer.

  10. #10
    Registered /usr
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    Except that spammers register about a million e-mail accounts using similar methods to spam the forums. It's not like you're gonna interfere with their mom's photos.

    What can you do with an IP address?

    This has been in my mind for a while: require mods to approve registration? Ask users to write a short essay on why they want to join.

  11. #11
    In the Land of Diddly-Doo g4j31a5's Avatar
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    >>We do log IPs and email addresses here don't we? It would be so nice to um...spam the spammer.

    Might as well do some PoD or DDoS to them spammers.


  12. #12
    The superhaterodyne twomers's Avatar
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    >> Ask users to write a short essay on why they want to join.

    "I want to help people."

  13. #13
    Frequently Quite Prolix dwks's Avatar
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    board.theprogrammingsite.com has the same problem . . . at least 30 users there are bogus; more than double the legitimate users. [edit] It's down at the moment. Too many bogus users . . . [/edit]
    dwk

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  14. #14
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    > It's down at the moment.

    That explains why I couldn't access it to create an account the day before yesterday.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  15. #15
    The superhaterodyne twomers's Avatar
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    Don't rate it on the bogus users, dwks, rate it on the active ones!

    >> That explains why I couldn't access it to create an account the day before yesterday.
    Did you get a 404 or did you not pass the joining essay?

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